## AAUW Data

AAUW picks bills that it believes affect women's outcomes, publicizes its position on those bills, and scores members of Congress based on the position they take on those bills. Using the pdfs of the AAUW 'scorecards,' we produce a spreadsheet with details about the bills picked by AAUW, AAUW's position on the bills, bill ID and vote ID, a brief description of each bill, and an original coding of whether the bill directly relates to women's issues. 

### Outputs

* [AAUW Vote Data: 97th --- 116th](aauw_votes_97-116.csv)
* [Data dictionary](data_dict.md)

### Method

1. Download pdfs from the [AAUW website](https://www.aauwaction.org/voter-education/congressional-voting-record/). The archive of the pdfs is in the following file: raw_aauw_pdfs.7z 

2. Get metadata on each vote picked by the AAUW from the pdf: 
	* Bill name
	* Congress
	* AAUW's position on the bill
	* Total votes in favor
	* Total votes opposed
	* Date of the vote

3. Bill IDs and hyperlinks. AAUW scorecards contained bill IDs for some of the votes. For the rest, we Googled the bill name and Congress in which the vote was taken. For example, "Emergency Mathematics and Science Education Act of 1984, 98th Congress". Generally, the first result took us to the Congressional website, which contains a unique page for every bill introduced in either chamber of Congress. From the Congressional website, we gathered the bill ID and its associated hyperlink (which can be used to download roll call votes).

4. Vote (Roll Call) Number
  
	* FOR CONGRESSES 106--116: For Congresses 106 and onwards, AAUW provided the roll call number for each vote on which Members of Congress are scored. 

	* FOR CONGRESSES 101--105: Using the bill's webpage, we located the roll call on which MCs were scored. Most bills had multiple roll calls, so we used vote date, the yea vote tally, and the nay vote tally from the scorecards to find the roll call. 
  
	* FOR CONGRESSES 97--100: The Clerk website does not have roll call lists for these Congresses. Hence we had to rely on another source---Voteview. Using data on the date of the vote and the yea and nay tallies from AAUW scorecards,  we identified the roll call numbers from the Congressional website. For each Congress, Voteview lists every roll call in chronological order. However, the roll call numbers differ slightly from those listed on the Congressional website. To find the correct roll call, we used the following criteria: the vote date should match what was listed on the AAUW scorecard and Congressional website, the vote tally should differ from the tally listed on the AAUW scorecard and Congressional website by no more than two yea or nay votes, the roll call number should differ only slightly from the roll call number listed on the Congressional website (there was more variability for the higher roll call numbers, but the difference rarely exceeded 5), and the bill ID should match the ID listed on the Congressional website.
		
		- **Note** At the time of data collection, Voteview roll call tallies slightly differed from the official tallies listed on the Congressional website (and AAUW scorecards) due to the inclusion of pseudo-votes of presidents and paired votes. In response to our email inquiry, Voteview has since modified its system to eliminate this discrepancy.
  	
	 * **Note:** Since there are two sessions of Congress, there are often two roll calls with the same number in the same Congress. For example, there were two 'Roll Call 55's in the 101st Congress, one in the first session and one in the second. The Congressional website does not differentiate between roll calls in the first and the second session of Congress. This ambiguity did not affect the data collection because the roll calls were gathered directly from bill webpages, and a single bill can't be voted on in both sessions of Congress.  (AAUW scorecards for the 106th and following Congresses list the session in which roll calls took place.) 

4. Coding Women's issues: We coded whether or not the roll call was directly related to women's issues. Our logic was straightforward: if the associated bill/amendment had to do with issues of equal pay (of men and women) or abortion access, we coded it as directly related to women's issues. Otherwise not. Here are a few examples of bills that we coded as not directly related to women's issues:
	- Defense spending on MX Missiles.
	- National Endowments for the Arts/Humanities
	- Budget resolutions (appropriations bills)
	- Reauthorization of Vocational Education. Carl D. Perkins Vocational Education Amendments of 1990
	- A bill intending to allow Head Start programs to judge job applicants by their religion
	- Reauthorization of provisions of the Voting Rights Act
	- A bill intending to define marriage as a union of man and woman, effectively banning same-sex marriage
	- Justice for Victims of Human Trafficking Act
	- Confirmations of presidential nominations
	- Authorization of private and religious school vouchers